One of my favorite moments in Cervantes’ Don Quixote occurs when he lets on that he knows perfectly well that he’s living in a fantasy land. On the subject of Aldonza Lorenzo, the country barmaid that he has elevated into the chastely beautiful Dulcinea del Toboso, he has this to say:
“Do you think that the Amaryllises, Phyllises, Sylvias, Dianas, Galateas, Alidas, and all the rest that fill books, ballads, barbershops, and theaters are really ladies of flesh and blood to those who celebrate them? It is enough for me to think and believe that my good Aldonza Lorenzo is beautiful and virtuous; for her lineage, it matters little, for no one is going to investigate it in order to give her a robe of office, and I can think she is the highest princess in the world. Because you should know, Sancho, if you do not know already, that two things inspire love more than any other; they are great beauty and a good name, and these two things reach their consummation in Dulcinea. I depict her in my imagination as I wish her to be in beauty and distinction.”
I depict her in my imagination as I wish her to be. Yes. That’s what divine madness is all about. Except in the case of Alonso Quixano, a.k.a. Don Quixote, it’s not really madness since, as Cervantes keeps hinting, he’s not mad at all. He’s just got this whole living thing down really well. He can tell his hawks from his handsaws and, all things being equal, he’d much rather have the hawks.
Which brings me to the subject of ‘period’ performance practice as applied to major symphonic works such as Beethoven symphonies. And I’ll say this about that: I don’t give a flying farquar how the Eroica might have sounded in Beethoven’s day. I don’t want to know, except that the performance practice people keep rubbing my nose in what they think was the ‘real’ Beethoven orchestral sound: scrappy, scruffy, brass-y, drum-y. And speedy. And unsentimental. And remorselessly metronomic. Which I think is balderdash. Beethoven was a lot of things, and one of those things was musician. Nobody could be Beethoven without having one of humanity’s most acute senses of beauty, temporal pacing, and musical proportions. If Beethoven was OK with scrappy and scratchy and rushed and inflexible, well then, we’re all wasting our time.
Now wait there just a moment, I can hear the argument starting. They don’t all play like that, now do they? Well, actually, they kinda do, I reply. I’m tired of hearing those scrape-y strings and borderline-blatty brass and everything zipping by in quickstep. Sorry, but I want the Berlin Philharmonic in all its burnished glory. I want the Vienna Philharmonic with its strings to die for, with its marvelous pungent woodwinds and its centuries of lived experience. I want my Eroica played by a nice big orchestra with all the trimmings, not some stripped-down, dressed-down, toned-down little gaggle of a band that sounds way bigger in a recording than it does in real life.
What I want is Dulcinea. So stop insisting that period performance insists that she’s just some farm girl who waits on tables at the local pub. Give me the virtuous and mysterious and elevated and beautiful Dulcinea.
Give me Beethoven with sound, dammit. Opulent sound. Big sound. Melt-in-your-mouth dolcissimi and peel-the-paint-off fortissimi. Give me a performance that’s willing to linger perhaps a bit here or there, or that has spent any amount of time getting chord balances just so, or a phrasing in the slow movement of the 2nd symphony perfectly balanced and planned.
Give me Beethoven. Beethoven. BEETHOVEN. He’s the ultimate kahuna, the biggest enchilada, the headiest head guy, in all Western music. That’s for a reason. And that reason has nothing to do with symphonies that sound like a junior high school marching band heard through a cheap transistor radio.